Photographing Wild Animals for the First Time

As well as photography, I love animals. I love all animals, wolves being my favorite. Loving animals as I do, I love going to our local zoo. Our closest zoo is the Cincinnati Zoo, and I recently went to the Cincinnati Zoo with my mom to take photos! When we got there, I got out my zoom lens and attached it to my camera before we headed into this amazing zoo.

We went first into the cat exhibits, where we saw a gorgeous cougar smiling down on its kingdom from a high perch in its exhibit. After that we saw a gorgeous tiger pacing through thick grass. Lastly, we saw a snow leopard that came right up to the glass to say hello. We headed over to see the African animals. On our way, we slipped through the jungle walk, where we saw lots of monkey and ape species, as well as a few adorable squirrels. When we got to the African animals, we saw wild dogs, who were mainly asleep, but still totally adorable, then we saw some cute meerkats. They were so fast I had to snap quickly to get good photos of meerkats, not balls of blur! After we saw the sweet meerkats, we went to see the infamous hippo, Fiona, and her new brother. They were so cute! We walked over to the lion exhibit, where a large, tawny-maned male lion was sleeping on its back, paws in the air. I snapped a few lion photos, before we headed over to the giraffes. The Cincinnati Zoo has a giraffe lookout, where you can be up on the giraffe's level, and I managed to snap some great shots.

We were heading to see their beautiful red wolves when two zookeepers arrived, carrying an animal carrier. We asked who was in the carrier, and it turned out it was a tamandua named... wait for it... Isla! She shares my name, so of course, my family and I love her. The kind zookeepers said that they were taking her on a walk, and that we were welcome to come! I snapped some photos of her before she had to go inside and we headed off to see the red wolves. They were beautiful, but decided that they did not want to look at me. Sometimes your hope doesn't come exactly true, but the experience, for me, seeing those wolves, is the most important.

Many animals - tigers, lions, giraffes - are endangered, but that does not mean they will inevitably go extinct. We can make a difference. Wolves, for example, were nearly extinct once, but people took action to save them and wolf populations are now increasing. If we take action now, we can save animals in danger now. Many animals struggle with deforestation, which means their home is being destroyed by humans. Others are threatened by human hunting. We can help by recycling. We can help by spreading the word that these beautiful creatures are endangered. Working together, we can save these creatures. I hope you enjoy my photos. Thank you, Cincinnati Zoo!

A Trip to See the Horses

I've always loved walking to our neighborhood horse park to see the horses and I had the idea to take some photos of them. And then it occured to me that our crazy ball of husky floof, Blizzy, has never met a horse before, so I decided to bring her as well. My family and I put Blizzy in the car and we headed out to the horse park. Before we went to the horses, we found a few places to take some sweet sunset photos of Blizzy. We had to bring some treats, as the floofy husky was very distracted by the many scents and sights. After I took some photos of Blizzy, we headed out to see the horses. Blizzy was captivated and watched the horses carefully, never taking her eyes off them, as pictured in the center of the last row. We weren't sure whether she saw them as friend or food, but the horses seemed to think Blizzy's choice was food and did not come any closer. Almost immediately after my mom led a reluctant Blizzy to the car, the horses came right up to us. I managed to get some horse snapshots and Blizzy snapshots on this trip to the horse park. I look forward to photographing horses again because this trip was so fun.

A Husky and Her Flowers

I have 3 dogs, and one of them is named Blizzy, which is short for Blizzard. Blizzy is a very, very sassy, currently 10-month-old husky pup. She has a very energetic spirit, and loves playing with our chocolate Lab. She is a bit demanding, and, being a husky dog, very loud. She screeches, and she howls, and she cries. But underneath all of her yelping and sassiness, she is an energetic, sweet, happy, and often a bit wild, puppy. Being so bouncy, it's hard to get her to sit still, so treats are my chance at a good photo oftentimes. When I took this photo, I was actually in my backyard with my mom, trying to cajole her to look and stay in front of our hydrangea bushes when she started to sniff the flowers, so I quickly snapped a few photos, this one being the best. Blizzy loves sniffing the flowers in the backyard and this candid shot really showcases her personality. People say never to take photos of animals, but sometimes the hardest photographic subjects can be the most rewarding.